Maybe it's burnout, but those hipsters that will call you out for not doing things the "right" way, will one day fly to the next flower. You'll probably stay and do the work, come rain or shine. Just stop worrying too much, the fact alone that you worry about doing shitty stuff or called out puts you in another category than those who really do shitty stuff. Btw, humans do shitty stuff all the time, it's our thing.
Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
51–60 of 243 posts
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#52> When I look at a new feature I just think that I will make it shitty or get called out on not doing things the "right" way. The thing is, I know I'm a decent developer but I find myself doubting every single decision that I make.
It seems that you already have the answer.
You know that there are times that you are right and that other people are wrong, and perhaps this occurs often enough that you are being inadvertently gaslit.
If you're CTO and you are being called out to this extent, then you might want to consider finding another company or stepping down to a senior engineering role. I've never been a CTO or have worked closely with one, but my impression is that a CTO gets some sort of respect and final say around things technical. There's a mismatch somewhere here. Other people aren't always right, no matter how reasonable they may seem. There has been plenty of times in my career where I've pointed out objectively counterproductive development practices and have been told that I was wrong because reasons, and sometimes I've totally noped out of those clients/companies for that reason. Unless you really need the next paycheck that badly, life's too short for the mental agony of doing things that are nonsensical.
Although I hope you also can consider whether your ideas are actually the right ones. Sometimes I didn't learn until years later how right someone was when they criticized or disagreed with my engineering decisions.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#53Sorry to be blunt, but you are rightly sensing futility. You've been working on something for 8 years, when the entire software industry lifecycle is only 2-3 years. So nearly every problem your company has solved was probably solved 6 years ago in open source.
I'm only saying this because I worked on a video game for 11 years. Finally got it released, at the cost of a falling out with my best friend and business partner, and we never recovered our friendship in the same way. This stuff can be brutal.
If you're a CTO in name only, then you're probably also sensing that investment in different people or tools like #nocode could have bigger returns than more code. But maybe that doesn't sound good to investors, so you keep doubling down on the current approach.
I went through a massive burnout in 2018 and lost my job in 2019. The stress combined with too much alcohol and gym time finally just burned me out. Humans aren't meant to live under continuous stress for years on end. It was like having a stroke. I lost all decision-making and problem-solving ability and could barely get out of bed for 6 months. Then the rona hit.
There's hope though, because I made a full recovery. Here's what I did, YMMV:
* https://www.depression-chat-rooms.org
* Split and subdivided my tasks to their most granular level in todo lists
* Executed the tasks at a different time or day to exercise executive function
* Tackled the low-hanging fruit instead of the hardest thing first
* Prioritized my physical needs over a job after I found the smoking gun, that gut health affects serotonin and can be sent out of whack by common foods like dairy, tree nuts like almonds, legumes and nightshades (B vitamins, digestive enzymes, kefir, psyllium husk capsules, spinach, iodine, etc, talk to a nutritionist or eastern medicine/Ayurvedic specialist)
* Dedicated myself to service (donated plasma, jumped to help others in need, vocalized that I was there for people)
* Found ADHD TikTok
* Set boundaries (most important of all?)
* Tried something completely different for awhile (handyman for another friend during the summer of 2020) - AND/OR - Worked on my communication skills
That last one might be hard to do, so if you can't take a break from your job, I'd recommend opening a dialog with the people around you. Being more transparent with my supervisor/boss at my current job has done wonders. It turns out that many of the people who antagonized me over the years were actually terrified that I was going to run away and leave them hanging. We're working through a tremendous amount of projection and anxiety as a society. So it might help to flip the situation from "what's wrong with me?" to "how can I help?" because the change in perspective might reveal the issues that your subconscious mind is warning you about.
In the end, it was all worth it, and I'm so much happier and more resilient now for the experience. But I can't lie, I still struggle some days with the continuous nature of it. All I think about pretty much all of the time now is how much I just want a break. But, a bigger percentage of my time now goes to my personal development goals (bought an electric car that I'm going to take full solarpunk to drive for free) so I use mantras and meditation and envisioning a better future to push through the tough mornings.
Hope something in this helps!
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#54It does sound like burnout, and also like not being in the right environment (which contributes to burn out). I had one job where there was a lot of technical debt, but my manager did not respect me and my colleagues had what was basically a "learned helplessness" attitude. So I'd go around trying really hard to make things better, but everyone responded to me like I was just crazy or naive or didn't know what I was…
I've seen that happen at more than a few workplaces. It's a very interesting phenomenon, almost like a cultural helplessness that seeps into an environment. The crazy thing is that it only takes one or two people and everyone gets infected eventually. It seems you have to have a very, very strong personal fortitude to resist it.
I think the "sense that you can change things", for which positivity is required, is the single most valuable asset that a company/team/whatever can have.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#55You’re a c-suite exec. You’re supposed to pawn that work off on someone else and then apply your cynicism to them.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#56Is it possible that you're not making the "right" moves because you're the CTO?
Leadership is hard and it's hard because you're making bayesian calculations on suboptimal choices. Almost by definition.
Say a Jr. dev has a problem that they can't solve. They kick it to an intermediate.
The intermediate can't solve it so they kick it up to a senior.
The senior can see a couple of solutions, but want's to run it past the architect.
The architect takes these options, weighs them against n number of considerations + the dev roadmap and sees strengths and weaknesses to all of them.
They package those pros and cons and brings them to you, the CTO to make a decision between these sub-optimal choices.
In this kind of environment EVERY move you make is going to be a little bit wrong. You just kind of have to minimize the wrongness
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#57CTO and developer separate into distinct roles as a company grows. How big is this company? Is it a small company with few developers where you hold the CTO title because you're a founding developer or the most senior developer? If so, you might be missing the reassurance that came from your previous life where you had a manager to check your work, peers to review it, and feedback from people who didn't report to you…
The company is growing in all facets. We added 17 engineers this year when we previously had a total team of like 10. You hit the nail on the head though, I got the role because I was the first engineer and employee at the company. In no way am I a great CTO, just lucky timing. I'm actually stepping down as CTO and becoming a developer again because I am not a good manager, that I know for sure. I think I need to be…
I would similarly commend you for the awareness and bravery to step down, but I would offer two notes here:
> In no way am I a great CTO
> I am not a good manager
It sounds to me like one core thing you learned is that good developer != good manager != good CTO. With that said, all three skills are different, but improved in the same way. Practice and with focused attention. It sounds to me like you were still focused on development and never really gave yourself a chance to develop those management and CTO skills.
It may still be the right call to step down, but I would at least consider trying to shift your focus to the other skills instead of development, if a leadership role is of any interest to you long term. You could also step down to a manager role so you can focus on one of the two at a time. If the learning here is that you actually don't want to focus on those skills over development, then nevermind this for the most part :)
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#58Some good advice here. One thing you may want to consider is that CTO of $x MM company and CTO of $100x MM company are two completely different roles. As different as engineer vs manager.
If you haven't actively adapted over the last 8 years, this may just be the result of being in a job you don't like. Whereas regular-exec work might be a lot of management, architecture decisions, etc., high-level-exec work is more pure politics, storytelling, and resource allocation.
There's a reason a lot of startups replace their sr execs every 10x-100x growth period or so.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#59If you're a CTO, why are you building out features, if I may ask? Shouldn't most of that be delegated to devs under you?
In any case, it sounds like you might need to try to find a community of folks to help mentor you, and act as sanity checks? At least, that's my thought.
Though with everything that's happened in the last two years, it may just be burnout, in which case rest is probably the best approach.
Re: Ask HN: I've lost faith in myself as a developer, how do I get it back?
#60Build something for yourself. Doesn't if it's shitty. Just build something.